Local meth stats down, but officials wary

While 2016 Indiana State Police statistics show Delaware County continued to lead the state in the number of meth labs discovered, the year's total of 145 was 89 labs fewer than in 2015.(Photo: Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press)Buy Photo

MUNCIE, Ind. – After three years of dramatic increases, statistics show the number of meth labs discovered in Delaware County dropped significantly in 2016.

Local police agencies aren’t in a celebratory mood about that, however.

While the number of local meth labs reflected in Indiana State Police statistics decreased from 234 in 2015 to 145 last year, Delaware County’s 2016 total still led the state by a large margin, providing almost 15 percent of Indiana’s total 983 labs.

Authorities have long credited the aggressive pursuit of meth producers and abusers by Muncie police, Delaware County deputies and a regional Indiana State Police meth eradication team with resulting in the county’s high meth-related rankings.

Sheriff Ray Dudley said that level of enforcement likely did play a role in a decline in local labs, but he and other officials acknowledge the statistics also reflect a redirection in the focus, both of police agencies and drug abusers, to heroin.

Delaware County Prosecutor Jeffrey Arnold suggested many local drug users have shifted to “death now” — in the form of heroin overdoses — from the “slow suicide” resulting from meth abuse.

“We’re just trying to keep our head above water,” said Muncie Police Chief Joe Winkle, noting he believes some local substance abusers are now alternating ingestion of meth and heroin.

Last week, the Muncie Police Department began a policy of having officers make follow-up visits with those who have suffered heroin overdoses.

“To see if they need help, kind of an intervention-treatment aspect, but also investigative on top of that,” Winkle said. “We think this is just a step to try to battle this. ...

“It’s a combination of trying to help these people, if they want help, and at the same time address the issue and try to do some enforcement and information gathering.”

The police chief said investigators would also now handle fatal heroin overdoses “as a homicide case for the most part.”

Dudley — one of the most vocal proponents of creating more local treatment options for those addicted to heroin — this past week saw his department joining with U.S. postal inspectors in probing the mailing of large quantities of crystal meth from western states to addresses in Delaware County.

Authorities are probing that man’s possible ties to a Mexican drug cartel.

An investigator with the sheriff’s drug task force on Saturday told The Star Press that it was possible the propensity of some Delaware County residents to “cook” their own, cruder forms of meth had led out-of-state crystal meth traffickers to view the Muncie area as a likely market for their product.

Members of the task force had noticed a sharp increase in the local availability of crystal meth in the past six months, he said.